A Comparison Study of Online and Traditional Student Withdrawal Rates at a University in the Northeastern United States

Since its inception, online education has posed challenges over traditional classroom courses. In particular, withdrawal rates appear to be more likely among online courses than those in traditional classes. Such challenges caused higher education institutions working on developing online curricula to meet the new challenges and demands. The main goal of this study is to compare the withdrawal rates between online and traditional classes in a university in the northeastern United States; and to provide recommendations to lower withdrawal rates. A dataset of 20,744 records from the university was collected and examined between the fall semester of 2011 and the summer semester of 2016. Two-way ANOVA, F-tests, and t-tests were performed to determine if course level, course semester, or college within the university contribute to differences in withdrawal rates between online and traditional courses. Based on the examined dataset, the results demonstrate that in many cases online course withdrawal rates have become lower than traditional classroom withdrawal rates. From those results, recommendations are made about which types of courses would benefit from expanded online curricula based on level of the courses, semester in which the courses are offered, and college in which the courses are offered.